Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte

Impact

Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte is a developmental and stem-cell biologist known for work on cellular reprogramming and rejuvenation. During nearly three decades at the Salk Institute, where he held the Roger Guillemin Chair, his laboratory worked on the molecular basis of embryogenesis and regeneration and pioneered gene-editing, epigenetic-editing and stem-cell techniques to study how diseased cells can be reprogrammed and rejuvenated. Among his most-cited papers are studies of efficient generation of induced pluripotent stem cells from human keratinocytes, zebrafish heart regeneration, iPSC models of Hutchinson-Gilford progeria and Werner syndrome, and a 2016 Cell paper reporting in vivo amelioration of age-associated hallmarks by partial reprogramming. In January 2022 Salk announced he would close his laboratory to lead the San Diego institute of Altos Labs, a company focused on cellular rejuvenation programming, where he is Founding Scientist and Senior Vice President. Altos describes his current aim as developing technologies to return cells to states resembling early, healthy life, with the goal of therapeutics for disease and ageing. TIME named him among its 50 Most Influential People in Health Care for 2018.

Metrics

• h-index 151 · google scholar as of 2026-09-23 source ↗

Research output

634 works · 56,657 citations · h-index 128 OpenAlex ↗

Selected publications

• Efficient and rapid generation of induced pluripotent stem cells from human keratinocytes ↗ 2008 · 1,424 citations
• Zebrafish heart regeneration occurs by cardiomyocyte dedifferentiation and proliferation ↗ 2010 · 1,366 citations
• Somatic coding mutations in human induced pluripotent stem cells ↗ 2011 · 1,274 citations
• In vivo genome editing via CRISPR/Cas9 mediated homology-independent targeted integration ↗ 2016 · 1,220 citations
• Linking the p53 tumour suppressor pathway to somatic cell reprogramming ↗ 2009 · 1,134 citations

Research funding

11 NIH awards · USD 12M total NIH RePORTER ↗

• REGULATORY GENOMIC STUDIES IN A COHORT OF IPS CELL DERIVED CARDIOMYOCYTES National Heart Lung and Blood Institute · 2013 · USD 2M
• REGULATORY GENOMIC STUDIES IN A COHORT OF IPS CELL DERIVED CARDIOMYOCYTES National Heart Lung and Blood Institute · 2014 · USD 2M
• REGULATORY GENOMIC STUDIES IN A COHORT OF IPS CELL DERIVED CARDIOMYOCYTES National Heart Lung and Blood Institute · 2015 · USD 2M
• REGULATORY GENOMIC STUDIES IN A COHORT OF IPS CELL DERIVED CARDIOMYOCYTES National Heart Lung and Blood Institute · 2012 · USD 1M
• REGULATORY GENOMIC STUDIES IN A COHORT OF IPS CELL DERIVED CARDIOMYOCYTES National Heart Lung and Blood Institute · 2011 · USD 767K

Links

Research fields

Associated labs